In November 2024, the Addas Synagogue in Melbourne was set alight whilst people were worshipping inside. In July 2025 the entrance to the East Melbourne Synagogue was set alight as members of the community were inside eating a Shabbat meal. These two attacks on places of worship are just part of the rise in antisemitic attacks in Australia since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack in Israel and the subsequent war. This report focuses on online responses to these attacks. It highlights a discourse, largely built around conspiracy theories, that is dismissive of, or even supportive of, attacks targeting Australian Jews. 

The discourse highlighted in this report often dismisses antisemitic attacks as “false flags”. It appears in different flavours, blaming the Jewish community, Zionists, Israel, the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, the Australian intelligence service ASIO, police, or the government. Regardless of who it blames, the underlying message in these conspiracy theories is clear. It asserts that the Jewish community does not deserve the same sort of sympathy or support as would naturally be given to any other community facing such a rise in racism directed against them.

This reflects a larger normalisation of antisemitism in Australian society. It has been particularly noted in universities, cultural institutions, and some media organisations. Australia has been unprepared for this rise in antisemitism. While the UK, the USA, Canada, the European Union and countries across Europe appointed Special Envoys to combat antisemitism years ago, and have actively been developing plans and responses, these efforts have only just begun in Australia. 

Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism recently released her plan to combat antisemitism, which outlines the harmful culture that has developed. Despite drawing on best practice from around the world, the assault on recognising or addressing antisemitism has continued, now targeting the plan itself. Our new report documents this response as well. 

This report is about more than synagogue attacks. It shines a light on discourse that undermines the recognition and support for combating antisemitism in Australia. Governments and the public need to be aware of this discourse and willing to challenge it.

Some examples

The report discusses various users who celebrated or praised the attacks against Jews in Melbourne. One such commenter uses the upside-down triangle representing Hamas twice in a post that says to “Never Forgive”, “Never Forget”, advocates “resistance”, and calls for “Death, death to the IDF!”.  This post not only supports terrorism, but it also supports targeting places of worship in Australia.

Many of the examples found in the report suggested that the Jews were in fact responsible for the attack. To this end, The Happy Merchant meme made an appearance. We have explored this meme in-depth in our report “The antisemitic meme of the Jew”, tracing its history back at least as far as 2004 when it was used on Tom Metzger’s ‘White Aryan Resistance’ website to designate a section of the website dedicated to promoting antisemitism.

The report also deals with users who put the attacks “in context” by framing them in a way that is antisemitic. This person supplies their own context for the attack, saying there should be no Synagogues in Australia (and by implication no Jews). This same person in another post declared there are no good Jews. The account, whose name includes the words “zero sympathy”, was created earlier this year, and its profile picture literally depicts a Jew poisoning a well, which is a very old antisemitic trope.

Media coverage

Articles in The Age and in The Sydney Morning Herald discuss some of the key findings in the report, including the prevalence of online conspiracy theories that seek to downplay the reality of the attacks on the Jewish community and to excuse antisemitism. The articles also discuss our report’s findings about the online reaction to the Special Envoy’s plan to combat antisemitism, which frequently appealed to traditional antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling our government. Our CEO Dr Andre Oboler explains: “We are seeing an overt effort to normalise antisemitism in society. That is what the Segal report is challenging and that is why they are threatened by it.”

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